Perfidious urban warfare in Mosul

The video above shows CNN reporter Arwa Damon and photojournalist Brice Laine trapped with Iraqi forces during their push into ISIS-held Mosul for more than 28 hours. The attack on the Iraq forces is typical for the tactic used by ISIS: A mix of conventional and guerilla warfare with a splash of extreme brutality and suicide attacks. According to Petri Mäkelä, ISIS manned the outer settlement of Mosul by less reliable jihadists and allowed attacking force to take them over with relatively light resistance. But in the densely built areas, where the Iraq army was forced to send its motorized light units, ISIS used pre-planned booby-traps and obstacles to funnel these Humvee convoys into kill zones, where they were subjected to intense assaults by ISIS forces using IEDs, VBIEDs, RPGs and small arms fire, as we see in the video above.